Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

By Celeste Langan

On Sunday, April 7, 2013, the Daily Californian ran a story
with the headline, “Campus announces plans to construct new aquatics
center.”It’s unclear from the story
just when this announcement might be
said to have taken place, since a public hearing on the proposal was held in Berkeley on April 3.Presumably at least those who organized the
meeting knew of the proposal in advance.Still, it’s fair to say that the proposal came as a complete surprise to
most of the Daily Cal’s readership—that is to say,
faculty, staff, and students.An
announcement has yet to appear in the Berkeleyan
or on the UC Berkeley website.

We’re told by Intercollegiate Athletics that the proposed
Aquatics Center, to be built on what’s currently a parking lot adjacent to the
Tang Student Health Center, is an “extremely generous” proposal on the part of
private donors (referred to as “Cal Aquatic Legends”), who have engaged to
raise all necessary money.We’re told that
Berkeley’s pool
facilities pale in comparison with Stanford’s, and that the pool facilities we
have are too crowded.Forced to share
Spieker Pool with other students, faculty, and community members, the swimmers
and divers who compete for Berkeley
on an intercollegiate level can only practice at certain times, which limits
their opportunity to elect certain major fields of study.

It’s probably true that better facilities and resources aid
performance.But shouldn’t we be
applying that principle first to the 99% of Berkeley students who are not intercollegiate
athletes, and to the object of academic performance?Instead, a valuable public resource (the land
granted to the university to educate California’s
citizens) would be diverted to serve the interests of only a few.Even if the construction costs of the
proposed Aquatics Center are entirely covered by private donations, the
plans for the building effectively monopolize that space, excluding 99% of the Berkeley community from
its usufruct.

Wherever we turn today, we read that the “bricks and mortar”
university is no longer viable; that it’s too costly and denies access to
high-quality education.At Berkeley we’re all too
familiar with the crumbling of bricks and mortar; after nearly every winter
rainstorm one can find pieces of mortar or peeling paint, along with puddles,
in some of the campus’ most historic buildings, including the hallways and
locker rooms of Hearst Gymnasium, the poor but beautiful elder sister of the
Spieker complex. Faculty try to teach
and conduct research in deteriorating classrooms and laboratories. Donors, we
are told, have no interest in funding the repair of existing facilities, in
upgrading and greening the heating and plumbing systems.And the state’s declining support for the UC
system makes even everyday maintenance a financial challenge.To respond to these challenges, the
administration tries to find ways to cut costs—diminished library hours, fewer
books bought, class enrollments capped to accommodate available classroom space
and diminished numbers of ladder-rank faculty.

In this context, it’s not just the prospect of turning a
parking lot into an athletic facility that galls.It’s the fact that the new facility will be
for the exclusive use of a small number of intercollegiate athletes, some of
whom already receive support in the form of athletic scholarships.The rest of the student body, as well as the
faculty and the community, will still have access to existing facilities.But what’s to guarantee that “access” will
actually be any more extensive?Where is
the plan to provide more hours for recreational swimming, to pay for the
requisite lifeguards and staff? Will the “Aquatic Legends” continue to foot the
bill for the new Center’s operating costs, or will the University now have to
divert some of the funds dedicated to Spieker and Hearst (to say nothing of
classroom maintenance) to pay for heat, light, and staff at the Aquatics
Center?

It’s true that the Aquatics Center is planned for a space
that’s currently a parking lot—hardly an inspired use of precious space (unless
one considers the disinvestment in public transportation, which makes it
difficult for many students, faculty, and staff who live far from BART to get
to campus except by car).But it’s not
as if the University has worked with Alameda
County to improve bus
service, or on its own to develop a shuttle service, despite the fact that
available parking for faculty, staff, and students has been seriously
diminished by recent UCB building projects.Moreover, the Environmental Impact Report filed for the Aquatics Center acknowledges that the project
“conflicts with the existing applicable land use plan” as laid out in both the
2020 Long Range Development Plan and the South Side Plan.

Consider what’s happening here.It’s a perfect case of what’s called “the
privatization of public resources.”Often “privatization” is represented as a benefit, the assumption being
that “private enterprise” operates more efficiently than public entities, which
serve a larger constituency, and often conform to a greater number of
regulations.(Kind of like the
difference between a car and a bus.) But we need to remember to ask who
benefits from these supposed efficiencies.In the case of the Aquatics
Center, UC Berkeley would
be ceding land use—granted by the state for the benefit of all Californians—to
a tiny fraction of athletes.Given past
history, it is likely that students and taxpayers would end up financing a good
portion of the costs.

And what of the net psychic
costs?Although universities are
imperfect institutions, traversed by all the economic, social, and cultural
inequalities of their historical moment, they also have their utopian
aspect:the “oneness” implicit in the
name; the sense that the accumulated resources of a university, intellectual
and physical, are shared my all members of its community.That’s why a university’s libraries, grounds,
and buildings—its “bricks and mortar”—are still important, because they provide
a space for the exchange of knowledge as a common
good, and remind us that education is, at its best, a respublica, a public
thing.

We should therefore ask the Administration to halt
planning/construction on the Aquatics Center until they demonstrate to the
public and formally to the Senate that it is a) actually, truly fully paid for
by donors, and b) that it is a good use of collective public University
resources at the present time, given that it will be used by a small fraction
of the UCB community for a nonacademic mission.

Posted by
Michael Meranze

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Senator Darrell Steinberg, after push back from higher education figures, has offered up an amended version of his Senate Bill 520. Although it shifts authority for approving online courses from the California Open Access Resources Council (COERC) to the administrations of the public higher education segments (in consultation with their Senates), it sharpens Steinberg's effort to compel the three segments to subsidize the growth of private online course providers. Instead of addressing the long-standing underfunding of the three segments, Steinberg is seeking to compel California Higher Education to depend upon alliances with venture capital.

One fundamental change in the amended bill is its elimination of any role for COERC in the new online course system. As I indicated in a previous post Steinberg had originally tied his push for online courses to his previous push for a system for producing digital textbooks. This part of SB520 garnered the most vociferous push back because it removed authority over curricula from the Academic Senates at the three segments and struck most obviously at faculty authority. In response to that push-back, SB520 now commands that the new California Student Access Platform "shall be developed and administered by the President of the University of
California, the Chancellor of the California State University, and the
Chancellor of the California Community Colleges, jointly, with the
academic senates of the respective segments." He has also added a clause that each online course must have "associated with it a faculty
sponsor who is a member of the faculty of the University of California,
the California State University, or the California Community Colleges" if it wants approval. There remain ambiguities here, most especially concerning the respective authority granted to the administrations and senates of the Community Colleges, CSU, and UC. But Steinberg has made that a problem for the segments rather than seeming to attack faculty authority directly.

Secondly, Steinberg has restricted access to the Online Platform, perhaps in response to the manifold questions that surround MOOCs and their educational value. In the revised version, Steinberg now declares that the Platform will only serve students matriculated either at one of the three segments or at a California High School. As before, the Platform is designed to focus on lower-division courses that have histories of over-enrollment.

But in modifying these sections of the Bill, Steinberg has only intensified its major implications. Whatever Steinberg's motivations, the amended version of the Bill makes clear that the heart of the legislation is mandating that California Public Higher Education shift course creation to private providers and guarantee private online providers a market in credentials and an educational legitimacy that they have been unable to generate on their own.

SB520 states as a principle that:

California could significantly benefit from a statutorily enacted, quality-first, faculty-led frameworkthat increases partnerships between faculty and online course technology providers aimedat allowing students instrategically selected lower divisionareas to take online courses for credit at the UC, CSU, and CCC systems.

Indeed, the Platform itself:

shallsolicit,
develop, and promote appropriate partnerships between online course
providers and faculty members of the University of California,
California State University, and the California Community Colleges for
the development and deployment of high-quality online options for
strategically selected lower division courses.

And lest we miss the point, SB520 also commands that:

(2) (A) For
each of the 50 courses identified under paragraph (1), solicit and
promote appropriate partnerships between online course technology
providers and faculty of the University of California, California State
University, and
California Community Colleges which, by the fall term of the
2014–15 academic year, shall result in the availability of multiple
high-quality online course options in which students may enroll in that
term.

(B) An
online course developed pursuant to this paragraph shall be deemed to
meet the lower division transfer and degree requirements for the
University of California, the California State University, and the
California Community Colleges.

Apparently, Senator Steinberg has sought to appease faculty opposition by shifting authority over the courses to the 3 segments and by insisting that each course be linked to a faculty "sponsor." But these changes do nothing to the central effect of the Bill: to secure a subsidized market for for-profit online companies.

If this conclusion seems harsh, it is only necessary to look at Marty Block's alternative bill SB547. I discussed Block's bill and its problems earlier, but one clear difference is that Block does not require public institutions of higher education to partner with for-profit online companies. Steinberg's SB520 on the other hand, commands that partnering as its very essence.

Higher Ed administrators and Senate leaders may think that the proposed changes are enough to make the bill palatable. But this would be a mistake. In its stripped down version, SB520 continues to forward an agenda of insufficient public funding and a desire to force public institutions to serve private interests.

The latest version of SB520 needs to be opposed. But even more than that, Higher Education needs to do a far better job of explaining what actually goes on in campuses and systems and how universities and colleges in California actually work. Or Steinberg's trojan horse will not be the last.

Posted by
Michael Meranze

Friday, April 12, 2013

Friday, April 12, 2013

By Anonymous

Yesterday
was the first day of the IU-system wide strike. "IU on Strike" reports
that 15 picket teams were sent across
the Bloomington campus to spread the strike – to dorms, workplaces, the
major academic
buildings, cafeterias, and bus stops. Teach-ins and alternate classes,
organized by undergrads, grad students and faculty and open to all, were
held in the heart of campus. More than 300 people
left the starting point of the strike demo, snaking across campus, and
were joined by more than 100 along the way. Many support staff (whose
contracts include a no-strike clause) stood in the doorways of buildings
to watch.
Later in the day, a group of 150 protested the Board of Trustees meeting which was held behind closed doors. Small
numbers of people were allowed into the meetings, in groups of five. The vast
majority of the protesters remained outside, chanting, sharing stories
of debt, and making noise. The
Board of Trustees meeting is traditionally open to the public.

"IU on Strike" assesses that hundreds of people participated in
the movement for the first time. Many academic buildings were half-abandoned. Solidarity
actions were also reported at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the
University of Michigan, while statements were received from many more
schools across the country.

The strikers declared the
first day of the strike a success, in making it clear to the
Trustees that the political costs for cutting public education have
gone up, and laying the groundwork for the larger movement and
disruption necessary to turn the university around. Strikers demands
focus on reducing tuition and fees, stopping privatization, improving
wages for workers, and issues of diversity.

Posted by
Michael Meranze

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Chris here. Meanwhile in Portugal, the Constitutional Tribunal's ruling that the 2013 state budget contained 1.3 billion Euros of unconstitutional cuts to public employees, unemployed people, and pensioners. In response, the Minister of Finance has frozen "non-basic" spending, which includes education. The photo was taken at a protest in March 2012. The sign reads, "If education were a bank, it would be rescued."

In response, the Rector of the Universidade de Lisboa, António Sampaio da Nóvoa, issued a statement condemning the "intolerable measures" and promising resistance. H/t to Ruth Wilson Gilmore, who also provides the translation below.

"Closing the country does not resolve the country's problems"

1. In an order from the Minister of Finance, dated 8 April 2013, the Government decided to close the country and impede the functioning of public institutions: ministries, local administrative units, universities, etc. The order is a form of reaction against the Constitutional Tribunal's decision, as is explained early in the first sentence. The Government adopts the policy of "the worse, the better". In a restrictive and difficult situation, whoever has been trying to secure normal institutional functions feels tricked by this blind measure that is against the country's interests.

2. We all know that we are in the midst of an extremely grave crisis. But it is precisely such situations that require clarity in policies and direction - economizing as much as possible, but searching, to the extent possible, for ways that institutions continue to function without major disruptions. The Minister of Finance's order produces the opposite effect, hurling disruption and chaos with no practical result.

3. It is an unwise and unacceptable gesture, that doesn't resolve any problem and that seriously endangers the future of Portugal and its institutions. The Government uses the worst authority to suspend the State of Rights and install a State of exception. Taken literally, the Minister of Finance blocks the simplest expenses, no matter their purpose. Just three examples among thousands. We are forbidden to obtain ordinary things for our laboratories, food for our cafeterias, or paper for our students' diplomas. Is this the way Portugal's problems are solved?

4. In the case of the university, there are also important engagements involved -- particularly international and research projects that will be blocked, without any savings for the State, but with enormous damage on the institutional, scientific, and financial level.

At the University of Lisbon we will know how to rise to this occasion and resist intolerable measures that have neither compass nor destination, and are absurd. There is no worse policy than the policy of the worst.

Posted by
Chris Newfield

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

By Anonymous

Students at Indiana University are striking on April 11-12th.
The strike coincides with the meeting of the university’s Board of Trustees. Six
of the nine members of the Board are appointed by the state’s governor.

Strikers’ concerns focus on tuition and fees; the privatization
and outsourcing of services; and a wage policy that has severely affected the
lowest paid members of the university. Twenty years ago, IU-Bloomington
received about 50% of its funding from the state. Between 2008 and 2013, state
spending per university student fell more than 17%, and total state funding for
IU’s budget has hit a new low of 18%
.
The most recent data suggests that the average IU student graduates
with a debt of $28,434.

Strike demands also call on the university to honor its
promise to double the enrollment of African-American students, as well as to support
the abolition of HB1402 (which prevents undocumented students from receiving
in-state tuition) and SB590 (an immigration law enforcement bill styled after
Arizona’s SB1070.)

The strike has been organized by open assemblies. The
emphasis is on laying the groundwork for a longer struggle to defend the public
university.

Support staff currently work under a “no-strike clause.” Faculty were initially told they may be in
violation of university policy in discussing the strike over email, but
this suggestion was retracted after protests about academic freedom. The administration
insists that “faculty and staff have a duty to provide the classes and services”
for which students attend.

UPDATE: The Nation has a petition in support of the Strikers. You can find it here.

Posted by
Michael Meranze

Monday, April 8, 2013

Monday, April 8, 2013

Morten Watkins

On March 29th, students at University of Sussex who had been protesting the privatization of the University were evicted from Bramber Hall after eight weeks of occupation. Students arrested at these protests will be going on trial later in April. Protests will continue however. You can find out more information at Sussex Against Privatization. The Independent has more coverage of where things are heading.

On this side of the Atlantic, students at Indiana University are planning a strike for this week (to coincide the meeting of their University Regents). Students there are protesting the ongoing and deeply entrenched austerity which has not only driven up student tuition but also imposed inadequate wages and benefits on staff. You can find out more information at IU on Strike. Some Coverage can be found as well at The Nation.

These are both ongoing actions and we will try to keep you abreast of new information. We would welcome people from either Indiana or Sussex who want to use the comments to provide updates. Feel free to sign in as anonymous if you feel the need to.

Posted by
Michael Meranze

Sunday, April 7, 2013

Sunday, April 7, 2013

On Wednesday, April 10 the Senate Committee on Education will hold hearings on both Darell Steinberg's SB520 and Marty Block's SB547. These two bills are the most prominent of the flurry of activity in the Legislature concerning Higher Education, “bottleneck” courses, and online
activities. As with other bills out there neither SB520 nor SB547 grapples with the systemic issues confronting California Higher Education (especially for the severely under-resourced CSU and CCC) but instead attempt to ride the MOOC wave to address the issue of access to courses.

Steinberg's SB520 has
garnered the most attention and is the most complicated.SB520 builds upon Steinberg’s previous
legislation (SB1052 and 1053) passed in 2011-12. These laws established a framework for the production of
online textbooks for lower division courses across the three systems.SB 1052 and 1053, created
a California
Digital Open Source Library and a California
Open Education Resources Council. Under SB1052, the COERC (I suppose pronounced "coerce") is required to, among other things, ensure the:

"[d]evelopment of a list of 50 strategically selected lower division
courses in the public postsecondary segments for which high-quality,
affordable, digital open source textbooks and related materials shall be
developed or acquired pursuant to this section."

"creation and administration of a standardized, rigorous review and
approval process for open source textbooks and related materials
developed or
acquired pursuant to this section."

and "establish a competitive request for proposal process in which faculty
members, publishers, and other interested parties may apply for funds to
produce the 50 high-quality, affordable, digital open source textbooks
and related materials in 2013."

The Council would
be made up of 9 faculty representatives from the 3 systems (each system sending
3).

There are legitimate concerns raised about
expecting 9 faculty to be able to manage this function. Still, it doesn’t seem
unreasonable that they could, in fact, identify the most important bottleneck
lower-division courses and determine those courses where the basic textbooks
seem to be the same.Given that the
proposed textbooks would be modular in form, faculty in courses would retain control
over the materials used in their classes. Moreover, Steinberg appears here to be trying to use public pressure to encourage private textbook providers to lower price. Whether the state should be providing funds for private publishers to produce these books is something that could be debated. Still it seems that Steinberg fashioned a focused tool that may help students with an obvious problem: the costs of their lower-division textbooks.

The heart of SB520 is the linkage of the California Virtual Campus to a new California Online Student Access Platform overseen by the California
Open Education Resources Council. Under Steinberg's proposed legislation the Open Education Resources Council would identify the 50 lower-division courses (across the three segments) that are "consistently impacted" and oversee a process by which online courses would be reviewed and approved and then placed in the California Online Student Access Platform. At that point the legislation declares:

SB520 also declares as a legislative finding that "California could
significantly benefit from a statutorily enacted, quality-first,
faculty-led framework allowing students in online courses in
strategically selected lower division majors and general education
fields to be awarded credit at the UC, CSU, and CCC systems" and commands the COERCtooffer "an efficient statewide mechanism for online course providers to offer transferable courses for credit." The creation of a "statutorily enacted" online platform through which private providers can secure a public market for their courses does at least two things. First it removes control over the curriculum from the Senates of the three public sectors; second it effectively leverages public resources to secure the investments of private venture capital. As Chris and Bob Meister have recently pointed out, SB520 not only falsely implies that MOOCs can compensate for the decline in public funding for Higher Education but follows a classic pattern of venture capital reshaping public institutions by using them to secure protected entry into a particular market.

Indeed, SB520 is a venture capitalist's dream: it opens up a potentially never ending public market for their wares and provides needed legitimacy for their products. Online providers will be able to concentrate on producing individual courses that will meet whatever standards that COERC may approve. They will not have to undertake either the process of ongoing evaluation (that will be provided by COERC) or manage the insertion of their courses into larger programs and general education systems (that cost will be borne by public higher education). Moreover, by insisting that these courses be MOOCs ("open to any interested person.") SB520 encourages the development of a secondary market for the MOOC providers while effectively eliminating courses geared to specificcampus populations. In effect, SB520 provides public funding to minimize costs for private providers; it is another transfer of funds from the state to corporations.

Most of the attention on SB520 has been on the threat to the authority of the Senates (Steinberg seems to have thought that having Senate appointees to the California
Open Education Resources Council would
prevent that issue from arising). And that threat has led to a good deal of push-back ranging from the faculty petition organized by the Berkeley Faculty Association to the critical letter offered by the system-wide Academic Council. One danger of this emphasis on the authority of the Senates rather than on the legislative interference in the form of teaching is the potential for complacence in response to Marty Block's SB547.

SB547, to be sure, avoids some of the problems of SB520 because it is much simpler: it commands the Academic Senates of the three segments to identify "high demand transferable lower division courses under the Intersegmental General Education Transfer Curriculum" and to develop online versions of those courses to be offered in 2014. It suggests that funding will be provided in the annual budget (although there is no command about how much that funding will be or what costs will be included).

But as with SB520, Block's proposal insists on the rapid deployment of a teaching medium that, initial studies suggest is profoundly unsuitable for students without previous academic success (see studies on Virginia and Washington. MOOC proponents will, of course, insist that the medium is experimental and that the technology will enable them to improve their ability to teach all students. That may well be true. But the future possibility does not justify the present commitment of resources and legitimation of a particular vision of education. That it is also a remarkable political intrusion into the nature of teaching (with potentially the same effects on the classroom as the introduction of the testing regime has had in K-12) cannot be ignored. Although I do not
doubt the good intentions of either Steinberg or Block, their proposals
subordinate the integrity of the curriculum in the interests of the
venture capitalists behind Udacity, Coursera, and other digital
start-ups.
Locking in online courses as the only possible solution to the problem
not only avoids confronting the larger crises brought about by state
disinvestment in higher education but also institutionalizes a
particular form of online classes.

It is encouraging that both Senator Steinberg and Senator Block are attempting to address the real financial pressures facing students and their families. It is also important that they recognize the importance of improving transfer rates and helping the CCC resume its important role in fostering social mobility in California. But their approach through the mandated production of online courses misses the boat. Steinberg's bill will undermine public education by entrenching private capital; Block's overestimates the educational effectiveness of online for its target population and therefore helps foreclose more imaginative uses of the digital and the allocation of necessary resources to the CCC and the CSU. It also allows the Legislature to avoid confronting the question of why bottlenecks have grown. It would be good if Steinberg and Block turned their attention to that issue. They might find that it led them back to the crucial problem that the State has created: the continual under-investment in California Higher Education.

UPDATE: The hearing on SB520 and SB547 has been postponed till April 24. I'll keep you posted if anything else changes. (h/t Eric Hays)

Posted by
Michael Meranze

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

By Robert Meister, UCSC

After a decade of skyrocketing tuition, Sacramento politicians have seized on a new gimmick to avoid paying for the kind of low-cost, high quality college education California used to guarantee all its students.

SB520, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Steinberg, proposes to "solve” the problem of over-enrolled gateway courses at California’s public universities and community colleges by requiring them to grant “full academic credit” for “comparable” courses completed on new for-profit online platforms (such as Coursera and Udacity) and existing for-profit schools (such as Kaplan and Straighterline).

This solution appears to be a zero-cost proposition for California’s taxpayers and students because many of the new online courses are presently free, except for the cost of providing certificates of completion.

The problem with this too-good-to-be true solution is that it is too good to be true.

As soon as SB520 becomes law, sellers of certificates of completion for online courses would find themselves in the new—legislatively-created—business of selling guaranteed transfer credits redeemable at any public university or college that admits the student to a degree program.

SB520 places no limits on what these for-profit providers could charge for these certificates despite the fact that the universities or colleges would have to honor them. At the same time, as budget cuts make access to gateway courses scarcer (particularly at the community colleges), SB520 would create windfall profits for the private sector that will not be burdened with the infrastructure or quality controls that have made public university and community college degrees valuable.

The long term result will be higher costs for students and a continuing decline in the quality of their publicly-funded education, all in the name of removing bottlenecks in lower division required courses that cuts in state funds have created.

SB520 would establish for the first time anywhere a system of legislatively-mandated transfer credits between a public higher education system and the for-profit sector of education providers. This hasty and ill-conceived bill is a legislative giveaway to a growing private industry with no commensurate public benefit or regulation.

Our public leaders should instead concentrate on restoring the promise of the low cost and high quality public higher education that built California.